Kylie Minogue has been keeping the nation's dancefloors filled for 33 years, ever since “The Locomotion” made public transportation sexy. It seems only fitting after helping bar sales in venues across the country for over three decades, she finally entered the world of alcohol herself. Her new bottle, Kylie Minogue Rosé, is the perfect accompaniment to a dance around the kitchen to Fever. Again. The real question was: did they not have a conversation about calling it “The Wild Rosé"?
“Hah, yes, there was!” she said on the eve of her 52nd birthday. “We did play with that idea, but for a start it was taken. And secondly, we didn’t want it to feel like a gimmick.”
Like many of the great pop acts, it is much too simplistic to think of Minogue as a gimmick. The ability to bottle joy, as she has done over dozens of genre-defining singles, means she is deserving of much more praise. When she played Glastonbury last year in the prestigious Legends slot – previously played by Dolly Parton, ELO and Ray Davies – we knew it would be great from the moment it was announced. After all: this is the woman who heard other people turning down “Can't Get You Out Of My Head” and knew it would be a hit. Minogue is a savvy queen of disco.
Luckily for all of us, Minogue is working on a new album. Following 2018's Golden, which saw her mosey on down into the world of country-inflected pop, she would like to confirm that the new album – Kylie – is “grown-up disco. [It's] difficult even for me to explain,” she said. “But even grown-ups need some pure pop fun.”
It couldn't be better timed. This year has seen a neo-disco renaissance, from Doja Cat's sun-drenched 1970s roller disco anthem “Say So” to Jessie Ware's “Spotlight” or Sam Smith's reinterpretation of Donna Summer's “I Feel Love”. “It's all cyclical, right?” agreed Minogue. “I loved disco as an eight-year-old, so it’s been a long love affair. I’m loving the modern interpretations of the genre now.” But it's not just disco that's having an upswing: artists such as Dua Lipa are taking the sounds of early 2000s female-led pop, itself fronted by Minogue, and touches of house and disco and finding new ways of playing with it. “There's a lot of early 2000s love around at the moment,” said Minogue. “Both feel like good times for me, so I'm channelling that into this record.”
Good juju is informing the album, but so are the much less pleasant circumstances of the moment. The age of self-isolation has played a role in how Kylie is shaping up, Minogue explained, whether that's in the lyrics or just in the hope that music will serve as an antidote. What better time to release a pop record? “The songs that are pure escapism have even stronger purpose,” she said.
Like everyone else, Minogue's plans for all this time in lockdown have not gone quite according to plan. “I thought I would have done a lot of sorting in the house. That has not happened,” she pined. “Nor has the fitness, learning a language or doing any of the seemingly ‘doable’ tasks.” What has provided a comfort, however, is watching plants grow, nurturing herbs “from seeds to salads”.
The whole experience has been a roller-coaster, says Minogue: friends have had the virus but have recovered, for which she's endlessly grateful, and, “I don't think I've ever felt further from Australia," she said. She explained that time feels like it's been thrown into flux – “Some days felt so long and then a week had passed in a minute” – and, when it came to self-care, “The hardest part was not the logistics of being, but dealing with the mind and emotions.” Luckily, she's finally found a rhythm: “This time has been about trying to stay well, stay sane and appreciate the creative outlet I have with making this album.”
Creativity, said Minogue, is the best thing to come out of the coronavirus. “I have loved seeing how creative all sorts of people are right now, be it helping on the front line or making us laugh on socials,” she said. “The humanity that is pouring out of people is so beautiful.” Hopefully that continues she said, but there's one thing, more than all the other anxieties, that she's hoping gets back to normal very soon. “Can we please do concerts again one day?”
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